covering. cartel fix equals divide and conquer. the only sane solution to drug profits is decriminalization. cartels love prohibition. it made them rich. legalization of drugs is the only solution to end the war. i'm don lemon. see you back here tomorrow night at 6:00, 7:00 and 10:00 p.m. eastern. have a great night. [ speaking foreign language ]

afghanistan is a place that's been bypassed by the industrial revolution. it's been bypassed by most major modern developments and by modern, we can go back, you know, a century and a half. afghanistan doesn't have a railway network. it doesn't have a national grid for electricity that reaches

across the country. it's very hard for people's lives to improve. as the rest of the world races ahead in the computer age and advance medical techniques around the world, afghanistan is very much stuck in the dark age ages. >> there's the afghan/pakistan border, the tribal region, it's a primitive lifestyle. we've been to some of these local villages, the homes are made out of mud. it's very hot. it's one of the most mountainous and rugged regions in the world. and these are people that were born to fight. you know, for ages their way of life is fighting. >> reporter: 30 year of war, generation raised in war, children left orphaned, women

left widowed. an economy flattened. people sickened by this endless conflict. they are fed up. everyone you speak to says, when will this end? >> upon landing in afghanistan, it was my first visit there what struck me was how primitive and backwards that country was. there was no electricity. there was no running water. there were no paved roads. quite simply, some of the worst roads i've ever been on. and as you explored that area, bouncing around on these awful roads, riding through river beds even, you get from place to place, another thing that struck

me was the leftovers of nearly 25 years of conflict were littered across the afghan countryside. old soviet tanks and armored personnel carriers just sitting on the side of the roads, ruined. pieces of tank shells, of cannon shells. and it made me realize that this country was accustomed to living with conflict for a quarter century. >> how did it start? look at this. i'm sitting on a shell of a soviet tank on a hill overlooking kabul. here. this is where so much of it began. this battle with the soviets and

the mujahadin, control of afghanistan. the local warlords rising up, backed by pakistan, backed with money from the united states, from saudi arabia. fighting the soviets to drive the soviets out. the soviets leaving as a vacuum. warlords turn on each other. who enters the fray? the taliban. it's easy to argue that that's when 9/11 and a lot of other problems in the region were born. when america simply walked away once the votes withdraw. don't forget, there was a war under way in afghanistan at the time of 9/11. they were front lined active at that moment as the taliban were fighting other afghans. 9/11 obviously changed everything.

the reason why the west is there is to answer a security threat being paved by the al qaeda organization in exporting terrorist attacks from its planning and strategic bases in afghanistan and in the tribal areas of pakistan. >> afghanistan has always been a country where it's a battleground of ideologies and unfortunately it's the after fan people who have to live through that battle. >> one narrative that i hear again and again, not only from afghans but also from pakistanis is, the abandonment they experienced after the withdrawal of the soviets and the withdrawal of u.s. aid to that region. after pumping in so much money and so many weapons, both of these super powers agreed to just stop, leaving huge numbers

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let me talk about the latest experience we had. we were driving on the outskirts of kabul and we saw in the distance this collection of tents and mud huts and we pulled over. it was a refugee camp. these are refugees from the fighting in the worst parts of

the country, the people who are really caught in the middle of the battle between the taliban and allied forces. and the immediate impression, when i walked in there was just depression and hopelessness. children with bare feet, ragged clothes, open sores on their faces, sores that are going to become infected and ultimately can kill them if they don't get medical treatment that they urgently require. >> the first time we walk need refugee camp in afghanistan, it was a refugee camp in kabul, it was our first few days into the country, i was shocked. i mean, there were acres and acres of makeshift tents, homes and it was just astonishing to think that thousands of people

still live in that kind of environment in the capital of afghanistan. >> the fear among eight organizations now, that if the drought continues, so will the displacement of people on a scale much greater than before. conditions in these camps are horrific, i've seen camps in afghanistan where, you know, there's been hard for people to find any wood to cook their meals on. hard for them to find any water. where the tents have been what looked like just rags tied together, rags and, you know, a few humble possessions. there's a resilience. there's an utter desperation. because when you see food coming in, when that food is in limited supply, unless there are people there sometimes quite physically beating people back in the

crowds, that food will be torn from the weakest people's hands. so there's -- there's a survival of the fittest. >> we walked into a refugee camp in western pakistan in spring of 2009 and there were hundreds of pakistani men, refugees, milling around, waiting for food distribution and increasingly agitated. [ speaking foreign language ] >> and they wanted to tell their story. they wanted us hear what they had to say and they were furious that the camp administrators, whom they accused of stealing

the very aid, food aid, that they were supposed to be distributing, were charging money for it. those were allegations that i could never really confirm. it was a dangerous atmosphere. and you can see how it can leave these people living in these conditions for longer periods, they will become breeding grounds for all sorts of problems, from crime to insurgencies. they could become recruiting grounds. >> because of the terrible chn conditions here the children are developing conditions that are difficult to treatment. >> some kind of allergic skin reaction that's gone chronic, it's been there a month. >> i've never seen anything like the scenes i've witnessed in refugee camps and sometimes it was so overwhelming, it didn't seem real. tent after tent after tent families, husbands, wives, children, and it didn't seem real to me that so many families, so many millions of people had been displaced, lost everything, lost their homes, their livelihood and they were now living in tents looking forward to one meal a day with an uncertain future. there were so many types i asked them what now?

what do you do now? it was a shrug of the shoulder, we don't know. that was heartbreaking. you see, seeing the children. obviously in distress. they were so excited, you know, to see us whenever we came with cameras, whenever we came with our crew. there was not a time when we didn't get a rush of people coming to us telling their stories. and to me, that was a desperate cry for help saying, we are here, help us, somebody do something. because nobody else appeared to be doing anything. and you know, i think the refugees are key because you are not going to beat the militancy in pakistan if you don't have consensus, if you don't have the support of the people. and if the people aren't being taken care of by the government, the people are living in tents without food and water, with uncertainty, how are you going to get them to support your

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italian taliban had been routed. 2001, after 9/11, and the pushing to afghanistan by u.s. forces. the way that the u.s. and others were able to tap into the existing militias here, forced the sovieted rise up and drive out the afghanistan. but the u.s. left. the bush administration shifted the focus of the counterterrorism operations, its anti-al qaeda operations, its so-called war on terror to iraq. iraq! we now know that there was no causes for that.

al qaeda wasn't here. saddam wasn't projecting a terrorist threat beyond its immediate borders certainly not to the united states. the regime of saddam hussein didn't possess weapons of mass destruction. the u.n. kept saying that. so like it did, after the soviet withdrawal, invasion of iraq took america's eye off afghanistan. and america's still paying aprice for that to this day. >> the decision to go to iraq diverted attention and resources from the fight in afghanistan. opened the window for the taliban to come back. it slowed the rate of reconstruction and progress and development in afghanistan. it made people feel here as if they had been deserted, and deserted again. >> the shift from afghanistan to

iraq was pulpable. we in the media did it as well. i closed national public bureau in kabul because we all knew a war was coming in iraq. >> when there's media attention on the country, the country improves. when the media attention goes away, the country falls apart. >> now you have nato fighting against taliban insurgents, you have a very unpopular afghan government, and afghan population who no longer trusts the international community, no longer has great hope for the international community or the afghan government the way they did in 2001 and there was an incredible window of opportunity there. and i fear that, that window has closed and now the country is mired in yet another chapter of its endless civil war. five years after the overthrow of the taliban, i met with a taliban fighter who had been in the front lines in the trenches,

facing off against the northern alliance during the u.s. bombing campaign of the taliban. he described to me the retreat of the taliban from that area. basically how taliban fighters, they got the order to run and just picked up and left and went back to their villages. and he went on to say that many of these fighters were back in the movement again. they were back involved again. and wanting to fight against the u.s. and the nato forces in afghanistan. >> for a year after 9/11, i lived in kandahar, pretty much with the taliban. they changed uniforms. their turbines might not have been the same. they suddenly may have been the chiefs of police in districts and local administrators, but they were still the taliban. >> all they did was shave their beard and blend into the crowd

and live normal lives just so they wouldn't get caught, they wouldn't get in trouble. the taliban have been around, and will still be around, and right now they're in disguises that you won't ever guess. lately we had a suicide bombing, it was a suicide attack within kabul and infiltration where eight taliban suicide bombers went to various ministries and how they got in, they were wearing a suit and tie, perfectly shaven, gelled hair, had men pretending to be their bodyguards, and they got into the ministries. >> the afghan taliban is a complex beast with many, many faces and many, many applications. one thing for sure is that it has prompt its capability to endure. what we now also see, however, is the emergence in recent years of pakistani taliban. these are two entirely different organizations, yet in many ways

they share similar philosophy and ideology and a war-fighting capability. in essence, the concept of the taliban is flourishing and growing across the border. >> the natural place they ran to was pakistan because that's where many of them had come from, that's where they got their train, that was a way to escape u.s. and coalition forces that were arriving inside afghanistan after september 11th. so they brought with them the same values they had in afghanistan, sort of extreme religious views, et cetera, et et cetera, and slowly moved that into the communities along the border of afghanistan and pakistan. >> the pakistan military made several attempts to dislodge the taliban that created a lot of refugees, did a lot of damage, killed civilians and ultimately failed. and then the taliban would just come back again.

>> even in the established settled areas, like swat, this is not the tribal region. look at what's happening in swat. that place is supposed to have governance, but it's not. a region where there was conflict and what security forces do? they ran away. what did the government officials do? they ran away. and that's why you had the taliban come in and take over. when you have the people of pakistan see this, a group of militants easily, just like that, are able to wipe away the government, the security forces from a region like swat, which was a jewel of pakistan, how are you supposed to have confidence in your government? >> i remember meeting one woman who refused to show her face, she was still in fear of the taliban recognizing her. she left the swat valley after the taliban rule of terror there. >> i have three kids for god's sake.

the whole point is, if it's not contended, blood's going to spill all over. it's going to spill all over in pakistan and the west doesn't realize the seriousness of the situation, probably your next 9/11 going to be from swat. >> she said the next 9/11 will come from the swat valley. this is what the people who have emerged from the societies are telling us. yeah, no it's great. i eat anything that i want. key lime pie, pineapple upside down cake, raspberry cheesecake... ... yeah, every night is something different. oh, yeah yeah... ... she always keeps them in the house. no, no, no. i've actually lost weight... i just have a high metabolism or something... ...lucky. babe... umm, i gotta go.

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hello, everyone, i'm don lemon. here's what's happening right now. we're following breaking news. nine people have apparently died in the collision of a tourist

helicopter and small plane over the hudson river. here's what we know. three bodies have been recover sod far. two adults and a child. the wreckage of the helicopter has been recovered from about 30 feet of water, and the plane, though, has not been found. recovery efforts are halted for the evening. >> i swear -- >> under the constitution and laws of the united states. >> under the constitution and laws of the united states. >> so help me god. >> so help me god. >> congratulations. >> see it now, justice sonia sotomayor. history was made saturday at the united states supreme court. the first hispanic and only the third woman took the oath from the chief justice. the court is set to hear arguments september 9th in a campaign finance case. i'm don lemon. i will see you back here on sunday night. those are your headlines, keeping you informed. cnn, the most trusted name in news.

an interesting thing that i experienced this spring in pakistan was there were a number of people i talked to, pakistanis who liked the taliban, who think they're good muslims, who believe that the taliban is fighting for something honest and noble. >> it sounds like the taliban are heroes to you. [ speaking foreign language ] >> translator: we love the taliban, this man says. poor people only like those who care for the poor. >> the taliban come in and they say, we will defend you, you are our fellow muslim we going to protect you against this corrupt system of government, against these corrupt policemen and judges and ministers, and that resonates with ordinary pakistanis.

>> the one that really stands out for me was a taliban member i found i met along the pakistan/afghanistan border. he had been captured by the pakistan army. and this was a striking image, here was a man, bound in chains. what struck me about him was that this was a gentle man. this was a man who was incredibly soft-spoken. it was disarming to see him there. he was defeated. he was hollow. we asked him why did you do what you did? he said, i was misguided. >> i am sorry. i'm very much sorry. i'm ashamed of my action. and i will not fight again. >> it wasn't the taliban that we associate with bravado, it wasn't the taliban with the gun raised in the air.

it was the black turbine and the dark glasses. this was a man who had been on the front line and was defeated. it was a very unnerving moment when i met him. and it will stay with me mother ever. and it will stay with me forever. ♪ >> afghans are probably the toughest people i've ever met. these people have lived with conflict for a quarter century and they have a sense of hume that i've never really seen anywhere else in the world. and they put up with more hardship than i think most any society has ever seen. >> you know, one of the

strongest images that i remember was this old man in a burned out building. it was a mud building, and it was a windy day. and there were dark clouds over the sky, and i remember he was digging through the ruble of this building and he was pulling out from this burned rubble of a mud house this torn-apart, battered, twisted metal frame of a bed, that is who the afghans are. they won't be beaten easily. >> one of the things that sticks out in my mind is when we went to the tribal region. we went to bajur agency. >> and so many people here are forming weapons. >> and we met the militia that the local tribes have formed to fight the taliban. one of the things i will never forget is i asked some of the

members of the militia. who do you dislike more, u.s. and nato forces across the border or the taliban? >> you are disturbing our situation. both of them taliban and american nato forces are equal to us. >> here's local tribals saying, we dislike u.s. and nato forces just as much as we dislike the taliban. and that's the indication -- that's an indication of how much work there is to be done on the part of u.s. and nato forces. >> afghanistan and pakistan are places where it's very easy to lose your life.

it's within afghanistan where after 9/11 was first i had ak-47s pointed at me head. it's where i first learned how to watch a room, where i first learned to pay attention to what was outside my window on the street, every day looking for things to change. it was in afghanistan that i knew that there was no one you could trust, and you're on your own. you're going to survive by your own wit. >> it's not easy to report in afghanistan or certainly in the conflict areas of pakistan because to have a giant target

on my head just by virtue of being a foreigner and a western western westerner. we are effectively hunted by people that, you know, if they weren't operating this way, we'd probably interview them. >> journalists have been killed here. that hasn't happened particularly recently, but i think there's a very real possibility if you're a journalist working this area to know that if the taliban can get you or some element of the taliban gets you or even criminals, they will take you for money or they will take you for political gain. they'll want to exchange you for other prisoners, for taliban prisoners. >> once of the saddest things about afghanistan was to watch the area of operations, the area where journalists and aid organizations could operate freely and to watch that shrink progressively over -- from year to year. >> sometimes it gets a little dicey. you know, when you're approaching people and they have grenade launchers and automatic rifles and they know that you

work for, you know, cnn or western media organizations, they come at you with suspicion. but if you treat them with respect, if you come out and tell them that you're there to tell their story, you know, i found that you get respect back and you get a pretty good dialogue that's important for the world to hear. >> i count myself really lucky that in that, especially in those first two years in afghanistan, that i had the freedom to drive all across that country from kandahar to other areas and to sit down and talk with them and it's very sad that, that era has passed. taking its rightful place

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the one child that i remember most is shiesta. shiesta lived in the swat valley, and when the offensive happened like so many other people, she and her family were forced to leave and their father went to look for a place for them, so it was shiesta, her

siblings and her mother. and an incoming mortar fell right next to them and it wiped away her entire family. and we saw shiesta at a hospital. and this was another instance that i was in disbelief who i was looking at a girl who just days ago had lost her entire family. what did she have to do with the taliban? what did her family have to do with the taliban? >> there was a little girl. one of our very first stories we actually did in afghanistan. she was 11 years old. she was begging for leftover morsels of bread. she was going from house to house in a richer area of kabul where she knew that security guards stood outside the home and they would have their lunch. so she would go after lunchtime

with her little bag and beg for bread. when i was talking to her, she was so matter of fact. everything was matter of fact. every answer she had, well, i do this because my dad's a heroin addict. i have to help feed my family of eight. my mom has to take care of the babies. she was okay with it because it was a part of life. but it came to a point where i asked her if she prayed. and that stone face cracked and one lone tear fell from her eye. she went to go wipe it, and as she wiped, she brought her hand back and was biting her thumb. so this little girl became a little girl again. that whole time i really felt like i was talking to someone

who had experienced so much more than me because she has. her life was hard. it was harsh. it was not a child's life. but for a moment, she became a little kid again. and it was beautiful to see that. >> these orphans who had to flee their orphanage in the swat valley because it was caught in the middle of the fighting this spring between pakistani troops and taliban fighters. >> raise your hands if you love the army. okay. now, raise your hands if you love the taliban. wow. i sat with these kids and they were incredibly well behaved and polite. and they had wonderful manners. and many of them came from families that were so poor, they simply couldn't feed their kids and they handed the kids off to this shelter where they were getting, by all accounts, really

remarkable education. but they not only had been in the middle of this battle over the preceding weeks but they had been living in the swat valley around this intermittent fighting between the taliban and the pakistani security forces for two years. they had seen really horrifying scenes. for example, i asked them, what -- have you guys seen the taliban? what's been the scariest thing that you guys have seen? and the kids responded, the suicide bombers. and then they started making motions like this -- >> scary. >> so these children had actually seen and heard the impact of suicide bombers attacking the pakistani army orphanage. and it's an appalling thing to imagine for an 8-year-old or 9-year-old person to see the aftermath of that, the pieces of

flesh, you know, littering the street at the bazaar right outside the shelter where you live and study and eat. [ praying ] i think that was really a terrifying thing to imagine, that kids would live and live with this knowledge and know what a suicide bomber is. and even impersonate one. >> children are always so vulnerable in these situations. just talking here in pakistan, some aid organizations believe that somewhere between a quarter and one-third of all children who have seen and witnessed the fighting here in pakistan between one-quarter and one-third are all traumatized in one form or another. but sometimes it's the children who have the best hope. and i remember in just the past couple of days seeing a small girl who was, you know, who was

displaced. and i asked her if she wanted go back home. and she said, yes, i do want to go back home. i do want to go back home. and then she said, but, please take me with you. and her whole family just sort of laughed a little bit and embarrassment. that this idea that even a young child could know that there's a better life where westerners come from really kind of stabs you in the heart. yeah, you can't help but think about your own children. it's inevitable. >> any father can't help but be moved by what you see here. it's heartbreaking. it's heartbreaking. and don't know what the future for these children is. i don't know. i don't know what they'll do in the future. i don't know if their country is going to have peace. 30 years of war. what will the next 30 years bring? i don't know. i look in the faces of these children. are they the next generation of insurgents, taliban? are they going to grow up to hate my children?

>> the kids don't leave you. never. i remember a time when i was in kandahar in 2002. it was in the first blush after the invasion, the taliban had only just left, i was living in this very dingy hotel in the center of the city. next door was an abandoned government compound. and this displaced family moved in. while afghans cut grass is by burning it. 6-year-old boy and 8-year-old brother were burning the grass. they didn't know there was unexploded bombs in the grass. they detonated right next to the hotel and we ran down. and we found these two kids. i remember the time we took them to the hospital, we were just

covered in blood. and when we got there, when we got there, it was no medicine to give them. not even painkillers. the boy who we watched die, i gave him advil because it was more than anyone else could give him. i can still remember his brother wail i wailing. i remember that sound as i left that hospital. i remember it right now. that's kids in war. ♪

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the afghan people are tired. they're exhausted. this perception that the afghan people are used to war, that that's their life, that's their history, they're normal people. you have to see them as human beings. no one enjoys 30 years of war. no one enjoys watching their kids starve to death. no one enjoys thinking that they could die at any moment. the next turn there could be a suicide bomber. >> i find afghans are really wise because they've dealt with a quarter century of war and

they've heard every promise and lie from every different kind of politician possible. spouting every kind of ideology possible. and they're really clever at figuring out where the truth lies. afghans, majority of them, may be illiterate but they're not gullible. >> and right now, they'll take salvation where they can find it. if it comes from the u.s., it comes from the u.s. if it comes from within afghanistan, if it comes from movements within islam, peace is what people want. if someone can deliver peace, they'll happily latch on to it. that's the message we get time and time again from people. they just want a break. they've had enough. >> the most afghans absolutely want war finished. they want a peaceful life. they want to get on with their lives and that alone should tell

the international community that peace can be achievable quickly. >> in a time i have lived in pakistan, the overwhelming majority of people that i have met are kind, generous, peace-loving, moderate people. they are not extremists. they are not fundamentalists. they won't believe in killing anybody for a cause. they're not suicide bombers and i think it is important for the world to know that because that gives a sense of hope. the suicide bombers, the extremists are a minority. but, unfortunately, they're capable of making a lot of noise. suicide bombs get attention. they make headlines. >> when people talk about the future here, it's hard for them to look beyond the past. >> the past is what dominates

peoples' lives in pakistan and afghanistan. they've lived through war, particularly here in afghanistan. 30 years of war. it's very difficult to imagine a future without war. >> the security here, the world cannot afford to -- and it cannot afford to not work for peace. it has to keep an eye on what's happening. >> needs to be very, very concerned that we don't create another generation of hate, another generation of insurgents. this is a fine line we're walking now. it's a very, very fine line. there is a strong sense of anti-americanism amongst many people here. the tall pan feeds off that. al qaeda feeds off that. of course, the terror that's

hatched here we can see transported, we can see carried out elsewhere. that is a big concern for the rest of the world. >> and in many ways it is in the west's national interest to see these issues resolved and in many ways it is just the right thing to do. >> and there are efforts under way where people are paying with their lives and millions and millions and billions of dollars to try to stem this growing tide. and they've failed so far because the taliban insurgents are still there. >> i believe that certain generations are lost. my generation, the generation older than me, they're lost in afghanistan. they've grown up with a mindset of war with survival of the fittest. you have to focus on the